Electronic devices with screens have been widely used in our daily lives and business environments. To fully leverage different screens, screen contents are often shared. Common methods for sharing the screen contents include a screen sharing technology, a screen mapping technology, and a screen projecting technology. The screen projecting technology refers to a technology that projects a currently displayed content at one display screen onto another one or more display screens through certain methods or apparatuses. The screen projecting technology is popular and often used in the fields of projector or smart terminal devices. The screen projecting technology includes two processes. A first process is a data transmission process to transmit screen content data at a first screen to a second screen. A second process is to display the received screen content data at the second screen. The two processes form a complete screen projecting process. In the present disclosure, for the purpose of clarity, the screen projecting is referred to as screen content transmission and display, in which in the first process is referred to as a screen content transmission and the second process is referred to as a screen content display.
Previously screen projecting needed a special data line to connect two devices that share the screen and use the data line to transmit the screen content data. With the development of the network, electronic devices generally have capabilities to become nodes of a network. Thus, using the network to directly share the screen contents becomes possible.
Under the existing technology, a method for using the network to implement screen projecting is mainly through a mobile device to wirelessly project a screen content of the mobile device to a screen of a particular large-screen device that is within a same local area network of the mobile device. For example, an Apple™ device (such as an iPad™ iPhone™, iPod™, or iMac™) projects its screen to a screen of Apple™ TV through WiFi. A Xiaom mobile device, iOS™ device, or PC projects its screen to a screen of Xiaomi TV which is connected within the same local area network, or projects its screen to a Xiaomi box and then the Xiaomi box transmits the screen content data to the Xiaomi TV.
The pitfall of the existing technology is that the connection between the devices needs support of specialized software and thus such connection lacks universality. For example, the screen projecting from an Apple™ mobile device to the Apple™ TV is limited to particular Apple™ products and based on proprietary protocol. The screen projecting from Xiaomi mobile device or iOS™ mobile device to the Xiaomi box or Xiaomi TV needs installing proprietary Xiaomi software and only supports screen projecting between Android™ or iOS™ mobile devices and Xiaomi box. To implement such screen projecting, a specialized application needs downloading and installing. Such specialized application often requires purchase and adjustment after downloading. Thus, the existing technology has a high threshold for usage.